Amid parent concern over new efforts to harness student data, Stephen Coller, an education technologist and a senior program officer at the Gates Foundation, talks about how public discussion over health data could positively influence current debates over the use of student data.
[Commentary] Facebook has come under fire from those who say the network is turning down the volume on their posts, but the bottom line is that the network can — and will — do whatever it wants with the algorithms controlling its news feed. Facebook is entitled to do whatever it wants with your news feed, including using it to convince you to pay for promotional tools, because it owns your news feed — not you. It’s good to be reminded of that sometimes.
Google and other tech companies are slamming a proposed Georgia law that would restrict municipalities from building their own broadband networks. The Municipal Broadband Investment Act (H.B. 282) "will harm both the public and private sectors, stifle economic growth, prevent the creation or retention of thousands of jobs, hamper workforce development, and diminish the quality of life in Georgia," Google and others say in a recent letter to lawmakers in Georgia.
Signatories include Alcatel-Lucent, Fiber to the Home Council and National Association of Telecommunications. The groups add that the bill "would prevent public broadband providers from building the sorely needed advanced broadband infrastructure that will stimulate local businesses development, foster work force retraining, and boost employment in economically underachieving areas." The Georgia measure, reportedly backed by incumbent Internet service provider Windstream, prohibits cities from building their own networks in any areas that aren't "unserved." The latest version of the law defines an area as unserved if no one within a census block has access to Web service of at least 3 Mbps. That's slower than the Federal Communications Commission's definition of broadband as 4 Mbps. Backers of the bill say that for-profit telecoms and cable companies can't compete fairly with the government. But others, including FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, say that lawmakers should focus on removing barriers to broadband networks, rather than promulgate new restrictions.
The Obama Administration's fluffy not-quite-press engagements -- not just the We the People petition site, but also things like its Google Hangouts -- keep nudging conversations. And for all the fuss over the goofy White House response to request that the federal government build its own Death Star, there's something bigger at work. In a recent article titled "Obama, the Puppet Master," Politico's Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei argued the White House has "taken old tricks for shaping coverage" and "put them on steroids," bypassing the traditional press -- and, by implication, accountability. But that framing doesn't fully capture what's actually going on. Partly by design (i.e., the self-locking of the Obama Administration into public participation) and partly a product of the fact that people who mix it up online and who work in government both lean nerdy, we're witnessing the White House's digital platforms draw attention to obscure, often intensely geeky issues and turn them into major policy issues.
A decade after a landmark campaign finance reform law mandated that TV stations collect the names of board members or executive officers of independent groups running political ads for federal candidates or any "national legislative issue of public importance," records show broadcasters often ignore the rules.
Spot checks by the Sunlight Foundation found numerous instances where political advertisers did not provide information required by the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act (also known as the McCain-Feingold law after its authors, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI). These requirements have become particularly important in the wake of the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, which gave rise to shadowy outside political groups organized as "social welfare" non-profits and therefore not required to disclose their leadership to the Federal Election Commission. Public tax filings with this information often don't arrive until years later. As a result, the disclosures that McCain-Feingold requires advertisers to make at television stations have become the only means of determining who is behind the nonprofit groups that pumped more than $300 million into the 2012 campaign. But the Federal Communications Commission, which is in charge of enforcing the law, so far has not taken action against stations that appear to have flouted it.
The use of telehealth remote monitoring interventions was not shown to boost patients' mental and physical quality of life in a study published in the British Medical Journal, but there were no negative side effects to the treatment either.
Researchers from City University London's School of Health Sciences and other institutions collected self-reported physical and mental quality-of-life scores relating to mobility, self care, ability to perform usual duties, pain and discomfort, anxiety and depression from patients diagnosed with either chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes or heart failure. While the report did not uncover benefits related to telehealth's potential to reduce hospital admissions or slow the decline in quality of life due to chronic illness, the researchers noted that the study also did not uncover any negative findings. They wrote how, in addition to benefits, telehealth has potential for negative quality of life or psychological wellbeing stemming from “the increased burden of self-monitoring, concerns about intrusive surveillance, a perceived lack of user friendliness, or the undermining of the traditional (face-to-face) therapeutic relationship.” In contrast, researchers with the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department, Boston-based Partners Healthcare and Englewood, Colo.-based Centura Health recently reported that home telehealth monitoring can improve care and patient experiences, reduce hospitalizations and cut costs. The U.K. researchers noted that their study was not a test of treatment efficacy that would have required a “heavily resourced” randomized control trial. Also, since patients with different types and severity of chronic illness were recruited for the study, attempting to determine the clinical value of the telehealth intervention would be difficult because “Pooling patients with different profiles of long term conditions could mask differential treatment effect.”
[Commentary] Depending on whom you ask, the Progeny Waiver will either (a) totally wipe out the smart grid industry, annihilate wireless ISP service in urban areas, do untold millions of dollars of damage to the oil and gas industry, and wipe out hundreds of millions (possibly billions) of dollars in wireless products from baby monitors to garage door openers; (b) save thousands of lives annually by providing enhanced 9-1-1 geolocation so that EMTs and other first responders can find people inside apartment buildings and office complexes; (c) screw up EZ-Pass and other automatic toll readers, which use neighboring licensed spectrum; or (d) some combination of all of the above.
That’s not bad for a proceeding you probably never heard about. For me, the Progeny Waiver is a microcosm of why it has become so damn hard to repurpose spectrum for new uses. The added twist here is that this time it is largely the unlicensed spectrum users acting like incumbents and saying that it will be the end of the universe if Progeny lights up its system (although the licensed neighbors say the same thing, pretty much), and Progeny, the licensee, arguing that everything will be JUST FINE, really, and if it isn’t too damn bad because we are licensed and they are unlicensed so there!
The satellite company Globalstar has an intriguing -- and potentially lucrative -- plan to help wireless network management, and get itself out of a financial hole in the process.
Globalstar’s 32 satellites provide voice and data communication to some 120 countries, servicing satellite phones and tracking devices. But problems with its previous generation of satellites hurt service and have kept the company mired in losses. Its stock, delisted by NASDAQ at the end of last year, trades over the counter at a little over 30 cents a share. Two years ago, John Dooley, an engineer and investor who co-founded Jarvinian, a venture fund that invests in wireless technology, approached Globalstar about a missed opportunity to make money. Globalstar licenses wireless spectrum to communicate with its satellites, but doesn’t use nearly all of it. Dooley told them that the “best use of your spectrum” would be on earth: Expanding Wi-Fi, effectively a three-lane highway, into a four-lane express. For this is Globalstar’s advantage: The spectrum it licenses for its satellites just happens to be adjacent to the spectrum reserved for public use, right where a new channel for Wi-Fi would be found. The picture below shows what the 2.4-2.5 GHz band of spectrum looks like right now in the Boston area. Those green and red peaks are Wi-Fi use. The part next to them, marked “Wi-Fi Channel 14,” is quieter, and half of it (“GS 2400″) is reserved for Globalstar’s satellite needs.
Newspapers are strengthening their paywalls, raising prices for digital subscriptions while reducing the number of stories people can read before having to pay. According to the latest research from Press+, the average price of a monthly digital subscription has increased 40 percent since July 2011, though just five percent in the last six months. Moreover, 35 percent of Press+ affiliates have restricted their readers to five or fewer articles per month, and 77 percent allow 10 or fewer.
[Commentary] The debate on cybersecurity has produced a sideshow centered around the belief that added security means a reduction in privacy. Such views are nonsense.
Quite simply, digital privacy cannot exist without cybersecurity. Weak security equals weak privacy. Want better privacy? Raise your security game to prevent hackers from stealing private data. Let the experts from the private sector and government communicate with each other so when they see threats, they can alert others and work together to create a solution. Despite this common-sense connection, a seemingly never-ending debate drags on about how our nation can improve its cybersecurity. There is lots of talk, but little action to support privacy's enabler. That could change if Congress passes The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) and the President signs it into law. CISPA passed the House (248-168) about a year ago, and since then has been the subject of considerable discussion, with no discernible progress.
[Steve Largent is president and CEO of CTIA-The Wireless Association, a lobbying group representing the interests of the telecommunications industry. Boucher is head of the government strategies practice at the law firm Sidley Austin.]
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